Related papers: Cluster Disruption: Combining Theory and Observati…
This article reviews some recent studies of the mass, age, and space distributions of star clusters, with a primary focus on the large population of clusters in the interacting Antennae galaxies. Some of the highlights of these studies are…
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
The duration of starbursts is important for determining how they are regulated and the impact they have on their environment. Starbursts contain numerous prominent star clusters which typically comprise in total ~20% of the ultraviolet…
We explore, through a simplified, semi-analytic model, the formation of dense clusters containing massive stars. The parent cloud spawning the cluster is represented as an isothermal sphere. This sphere is in near force balance between…
It is often argued that young stellar clusters suffer a significant infant mortality that is partly related to the expulsion of dust and gas in their early phases caused by radiation pressure from hot stars and supernovae. Near-infrared…
Current observational constraints on the dynamical evolution of star clusters are reviewed. Theory and observations now agree nicely on the mass dependency and time scales for disruption of young star clusters in galactic disks, but many…
We consider both observational and theoretical issues related to dynamical mass loss from the old globular star clusters of the Galaxy. On the observational side the evidence includes tidal tails and extratidal extensions, kinematic…
We examine the effects of gas expulsion on initially sub-structured and out-of-equilibrium star clusters. We perform N-body simulations of the evolution of star clusters in a static background potential before adjusting that potential to…
Whether or not the rich star cluster population in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is affected by significant disruption during the first few x 10^8 yr of its evolution is an open question and the subject of significant current debate.…
We consider tidal masses and ages of Milky Way open clusters, as well as a simple model of their distribution. Our aim is to investigate the space of model parameters and the correspondence between modelled and observed two-dimensional…
Stars do not generally form in isolation. Instead, they form in clusters, and in these clustered environments newborn stars can have profound effects on one another and on their parent gas clouds. Feedback from clustered stars is almost…
We investigate the influence of the external tidal field of a dark matter halo on the dynamical evolution of star clusters using direct N-body simulations, where we assume that the halo is described by a Navarro, Frenk & White mass profile…
In 1958 Jan Oort remarked that the lack of old clusters in the solar neighborhood (SN) implies that clusters are destroyed on a timescale of less than a Gyr. This is much shorter than the predicted dissolution time of clusters due to…
Strong encounters between single stars and binaries play a pivotal role in the evolution of star clusters. Such encounters can also dramatically modify the orbital parameters of binaries, exchange partners in and out of binaries, and are a…
The analysis of the age distributions of star cluster samples of different galaxies has resulted in two very different empirical models for the dissolution of star clusters: the Baltimore model and the Utrecht model. I describe these two…
Interacting galaxies favor the formation of star clusters but are also suspected to affect their evolution through an intense and rapidly varying tidal field. Treating this complex behaviour remains out-of-reach of (semi-)analytical…
This conference dealt with the mass loss from stars and from stellar clusters. In this summary of the cluster section of the conference, I highlight some of the results on the formation and the fundamental properties of star clusters (Sect.…
It is widely accepted that stars do not form in isolation but result from the fragmentation of molecular clouds, which in turn leads to star cluster formation. Over time, clusters dissolve or are destroyed by interactions with molecular…
We investigate the evolution of the tidal field experienced by massive star clusters using cosmological simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies. Clusters in our simulations experience the strongest tidal force in the first few hundred Myr…
The physical properties of star cluster populations offer valuable insights into their birth, evolution, and disruption. However, individual stars in clusters beyond the nearest neighbours of the Milky Way are unresolved, forcing analyses…